


Talk to Me

by midoriverte



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, ghoul integration au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 04:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12741144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midoriverte/pseuds/midoriverte
Summary: Hide knows Kaneki is hiding something from him, but he has no idea what it could be. All he knows is Kaneki's secrecy is slowly driving a wedge between them and he doesn't know how much longer he can take it.





	Talk to Me

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for a zine that didn't really happen ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. Figured I might as well finally post it lol. 
> 
> Beta'd by Sondeneige.

 

Hide wasn’t thinking of breaking up with Kaneki, not really. It was more like the _concept_ of breaking up had settled on the periphery of his consciousness, shadowy and vaguely ominous, waiting to jump out at him during his weakest moments.

It was just that Kaneki was not the most… _open_ person in the world, which Hide knew when he started dating him, of course. In many ways he even thought that Kaneki’s initial aloofness was part of his charm.

It just got a lot less charming when you had been dating for almost a year and it still seemed like you hadn’t gotten anywhere with him. Hide was pretty good at reading people, and deep down he knew Kaneki was hiding something from him, though he could not for the life of him figure out what that could be.

The first, and probably the most stupid of their fights, was the recurring one about Hide’s cooking. The latest round of it having occurred just last week.

“If you don’t like it,” Hide had said tersely, for what felt like the thousandth time, as he watched Kaneki despondently push his food around his plate, “then don’t eat it.”

“I do like your cooking,” Kaneki said, reaching up to unconsciously touch his chin, like he always did.

Hide knew that meant he was lying, he just wished he knew _why_. It’s not like Hide took particular pride in his cooking, he wouldn’t be that hurt if Kaneki just wanted to cook for himself.

The second of their recurring fights was a bit more serious. Hide had floated the idea of moving in together with Kaneki once or twice.  Hide would have easily accepted “it’s too early, don’t you think?” as an answer if it weren’t for the damn chin touch Kaneki did when he said it.

It wasn’t the lying, it was the _motivation_ behind it which baffled Hide. He wanted to know _why_ his boyfriend was lying. It was, as Hide was now explaining in the latest round of their third recurring fight, the _principle_ of the thing.

“What does that even mean?” Kaneki asked wearily as he put away the pots Hide had finished washing.

“It _means_ ,” Hide said, scrubbing at a pot and refusing to look at Kaneki as he spoke, “that I don’t get why you’re always avoiding letting me hang out with your friends-”

“Oh god, not this again-”

“-When you’re always going on about how important they are to you,” Hide concluded.

“I did introduce you to them,” Kaneki said evenly.

“We’ve been dating for a year and you won’t even let me hang out with them!”

“It’s nothing to do with ‘letting’ you hang out with them. There’s just never been a good time.”

Even out of the corner of his eye, Hide could see Kaneki touch his chin. It was amazing how much a simple gesture could infuriate him.

Hide threw his dishrag into the sink and finally turned to glare at Kaneki.

“What?” Kaneki said.

“Stop lying to me!”

“I’m not lying-”

“Yes you are!  I can tell!” Hide became aware that he was shouting and tried to speak calmly. “Why can’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Kaneki said shortly, he turned to put more dishes away and Hide was left standing there silently for a moment. He noticed his hands were still dripping with soap bubbles and he tried to wipe them off hastily.

“Kaneki, we need to talk about this. Please.”

Kaneki sighed deeply, “About what, Hide?”  His back was firmly turned now. He refused to look at Hide as he walked further away, putting more dishes into cupboards.

“About… this. You always do this. You completely shut down when I try to talk to you about anything.”

“What do you want me to do, then?”

“I don’t know… talk to me about something, anything? Look at me when I’m talking to you?” Hide hated how these came out as questions almost as much as he hated the tears that automatically sprang to his eyes as he asked them.

“We can talk later,” Kaneki’s voice was still so infuriatingly calm.

“What if there isn’t a later?” Hide bit out. “What if I say I’m through with you always shutting me out?”

“Then I…” Kaneki trailed off, but his voice finally cracked, just a little, and Hide hated the satisfaction it brought him.

“I’m sick of you always acting like everything’s fine, when all you ever do is shut me out and hide things from me!

“I don’t-”

“Yes you do!”

“You’re being-”

“What?  Stupid? I guess so, since I’m obviously wasting my time with someone who couldn’t care less about me!”

“ _Hide_.” Finally, a trace of anger. “That’s going too far, of course I care about you.”

“Then why don’t you ever _show_ it?” Tears spilled out and he wiped at them furiously.

“That’s not-  I try to, Hide. You know I do.”

“No you _don’t_!” Hide snapped, his hands curled into fists. “When do you ever show that you care? You-”

“ _Stop!_ ” Kaneki snapped he whirled around to face Hide at last, clearly pushed past his breaking point.

Hide would have been relieved, but in that moment Kaneki’s left eye changed – _flared_ – into a deep black with a brilliant crimson iris.

Hide didn’t mean to recoil, but he had little control over it as his heart skipped a beat and his mind reeled with the discovery that his boyfriend was a-

“Ghoul,” Hide whispered softly, unintentionally.

Kaneki’s face crumpled, he clamped his hand over his eye but it was too late for Hide to pretend he hadn’t seen it.

“Kaneki…” Hide didn’t know what to say.

Kaneki just shook his head. He seemed to shrink upon himself.

“I’m sorry, I…” Kaneki swallowed and said, in a shaking voice, “I think I need to go.”

Hide didn’t say a word, he was not sure if he would have been able to if he tried. And before he knew it Kaneki had put on his coat and left.

***

Hide couldn’t sleep. He had called Kaneki dozens of times, only to have each call go straight to voicemail.

He was, at least, thankful that Kaneki was technologically inept, and probably had no idea that Hide could see that Kaneki had read his texts even though he hadn’t responded to a single one of them.

He ran his hands through his hair and flipped around in bed so that he was lying on his stomach. He was sick of staring up at a dark ceiling for hours. With his face half-buried in the pillow, he checked his phone for replies he knew weren’t coming.

Most of the messages he had sent to Kaneki were variations of “ _please come back home let’s talk about this I love you_ ”. He had no idea what to say if Kaneki actually replied. “I don’t care that you’re a ghoul” sounded nice but wasn’t entirely accurate. He loved Kaneki. He trusted him. But a not-so-small part of him remembered how his heart froze in fear when he’d seen Kaneki with his one red eye.

_Anyone would have been scared seeing their boyfriend like that_ , he thought furiously. A conversation would have been nice rather than having this information sprung on him in the middle of a fight.

He remembered how crushed and defeated Kaneki looked when he saw Hide recoil, and his anger melted into a feeling of intense guilt.

Maybe it was best to just give him space, Hide decided. He’d calm down, realize Hide loved him and he’d come back and they would talk and everything would be _just fine_.

After about a week with no word from Kaneki, Hide had to acknowledge that he should have known Kaneki better than to have thought things would be that easy.

After two weeks and many desperate texts and phone calls that still didn’t receive a reply, Hide had looped back from sad to guilty to furious.  He was going to find Kaneki Ken and _make_ him talk to him if it was the last thing he ever did.

He was sure that Kaneki would not have stopped going to work, partially because he still needed money, but mostly because he actually liked his job and all his coworkers were his friends.

Hide fully expected that he would have to fight to find information on Kaneki’s whereabouts from them. Maybe shout a little. Knock over a table or two.

He burst through the door of the little shop, causing the bell over the door to ring in a satisfyingly dramatic way, but had barely opened his mouth before Touka looked up from the table she was serving and said: “He’s in the back,” gesturing to the door which led to the small kitchen.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Hide said, a little disappointed he didn’t have the opportunity to raise at least a little commotion.

Kaneki was, as promised, in the kitchen. Though he was infuriatingly not looking at the door in anticipation of Hide’s arrival.

“Oh, good,” Kaneki said. “Touka, can you-.” Kaneki turned around and stopped dead at the sight of Hide. He dropped the plates he was holding and they smashed on the floor.

“You thought I was Touka? I thought ghouls were supposed to have super scent abilities or something?”

Hide had intended it as a joke, but from the pained look on Kaneki’s face he could tell that it was maybe a bit too soon.

“S-sorry,” Hide mumbled.

Kaneki just shook his head, still refusing to look at Hide.

Actually, Hide noticed his eyes darting to the door Hide had just closed.

“You better not be planning on running past me!” Hide warned.

Kaneki looked guilty.

“Look… please just talk to me?” Hide begged. “I swear I’m not angry.”

“You’re not angry after finding out your boyfriend’s a monster?” Kaneki laughed bitterly.

“You’re not a monster!” Hide said, so vehemently that Kaneki jumped a little. “How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” Kaneki looked tired and, somehow, older than Hide had ever seen him. “Do you have any idea what kind of things I’ve done?”

“That doesn’t matter-,”

“It _does_ matter!” Kaneki snapped. “Don’t you dare say it doesn’t! I _eat_ people, Hide, aren’t you scared of that? I could have hurt you!”

“No,” Hide said simply.

“N-no?” Kaneki asked, bewildered.

“No, I’m not scared of you. No, I don’t believe you would ever hurt me,” Hide said. “I… know I looked shocked when I saw your eye like that-”

Kaneki scoffed and crossed his arms.

“-But you just surprised me.”

“Surprised you,” Kaneki repeated, sounding unimpressed.

“Look, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared in the moment,” Hide admitted. “But I’m not afraid of you.”

“You have no idea,” Kaneki said, still refusing to look Hide in the eye.

“Why don’t you tell me, then?” Again, Hide couldn’t keep himself from tearing up in his frustration. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“How could I?” Kaneki said, in contrast to Hide’s frustration, he just sounded tired. “You have no idea what it was like when the CCG was hunting ghouls. You have no idea how much humans still hate us.”

“I could never hate you!”

“You could,” Kaneki mumbled. “I couldn’t bear it if you did.”

“Well,” Hide said, voice breaking a little. “You’re wrong. I don’t hate you, and I want to make this work.”

“Y-you do?” Kaneki looked genuinely surprised.

“Did the three hundred text messages not tip you off?” Hide asked weakly.

“I’ve been a little…messed up these last two weeks,” Kaneki mumbled. “Touka’s had to deal with it.”

“Let’s start with that,” Hide said. “All your friends, they’re ghouls too right?”

Kaneki winced, but nodded.

“Is that why you didn’t want me to meet them?”

Kaneki sighed, “Please try to understand. Even now, most ghouls are afraid of being ostracized by people. And… I was worried you’d be afraid of them if you found out. That’s why I tried to keep you apart as much as possible.”

Hide replayed his reaction to learning Kaneki was a ghoul through Kaneki’s eyes. How it must have felt to see his boyfriend recoil when he saw the one secret he was most desperate to hide.

“I’m sorry,” Hide said quietly. “But you could have told me anytime, Kaneki. You know that.”

“I wanted to,” Kaneki said. “I came so close so many times, and I knew with every passing day it was just going to be worse when you found out. But I just…couldn’t,” he sighed. “I knew you were getting suspicious too. You’re so intuitive that it’s kind of frightening, you know that right?”

Hide grinned in spite of himself. “And you’re so masochistic that it worries me. I can’t believe how much of my cooking you ate, isn’t human food supposed to taste awful to ghouls?”

Kaneki groaned. “It does. I was trying to make sure you didn’t figure me out. And also, I mean, you worked so hard to make it for me, but it always tasted so awful to me. I’m sorry.”

“In all fairness, my cooking is pretty awful,” Hide said. Kaneki laughed, just a little, at that. And Hide considered it a victory.

“You’re adorable, you know,” Hide said.

Kaneki looked dumbfounded, giving Hide a look that clearly questioned his judgment. Or his sanity.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Hide said. “Come on, forcing yourself to eat human food just because I made it for you? Adorable.”

Kaneki was still giving him a look as he said, “I think you’re one of the only people who could look at a ghoul and think they were adorable, Hide.”

“Then that’s everyone else’s problem. Anyone who could look at you and not think you were cute is nuts.”

A faint blush crept onto Kaneki’s cheeks. “I honestly can’t believe you sometimes,” he mumbled.

“What can I say? I’m a fool for love.”

Kaneki blinked at him in surprise.

“What?” Hide asked.

“St-still?”

“What?  Am I still a fool for love?”

“No I mean… even after all this you still-?” It seemed Kaneki was unable to say the words “love me”.

“Of course I do!” Hide exclaimed, almost offended. “What do you think I hunted you down for?”

“I just thought that maybe, after all this-”. Kaneki choked up, his eyes filling with tears.

Never, in all the time he had known Kaneki, had Hide ever seen him close to crying. The sight was enough to make Hide’s residual annoyance at his denseness vanish.

“Hey, come here-,” Hide approached Kaneki and gently put his arms around him. He was relieved when Kaneki only tensed up for a moment, and buried his head in the crook of Hide’s neck to hide his tears.

“I love you,” Hide said softly. “I love you so much. I want to make this work.”

He felt Kaneki nod. “I wanna make this work too,” he said. “I want to be honest with you from now on. About everything.”

“Well that’s a good start,” Hide said. Kaneki half laughed and half sobbed.

“Hey, hey,” Hide said soothingly. “It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry…,” Kaneki mumbled weakly.

“Don’t be,” Hide said firmly. “You can be honest and I can be patient, and we’ll work this out, yeah?”

“Yeah…” Kaneki took a deep breath and pulled away from Hide - as much as Hide’s tight hold would let him – to look Hide in the eye.

“I love you too,” Kaneki said. “So much.”

Hide smiled. He wasn’t sure which one of them leaned in first to kiss, it may have been a simultaneous decision based on the knowledge that now was a good moment if there ever was one, but it was soft, sweet, slow and wonderful and Hide was dizzy with the feeling of just how much he loved Kaneki.

They broke away from each other and Kaneki was smiling at him gently. He was slightly flushed, his eyes were sparkling, but most of all he looked more open and more _happy_ than Hide could ever remember seeing him.

Kaneki ran his hand up to cup Hide’s face.

“You’re so beautiful,” Kaneki mumbled, almost to himself.

“M-me?” Hide stuttered.

“Yeah you,” Kaneki smiled as Hide blushed. “Now you know how I felt when you wouldn’t stop saying I’m adorable!”

“Yeah, well…” Hide had no response, since Kaneki was right.

Kaneki’s smile faded a little as he said, “You know, uh, I don’t actually have any objections to moving in with you? It was mostly that I knew I couldn’t hide the fact that I was a ghoul if I lived with you.”

“O-oh,” Hide said.

“But, uh, maybe we should take things a bit slow right now?” Kaneki coughed nervously. “Rebuild our relationship from this point?”

Hide kissed Kaneki on the cheek. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

Kaneki pulled Hide in for another tight hug. “You’re too good for me.”

“Nah, I only hope I can be half as good as you deserve.”

Kaneki smiled weakly before his eyes widened in horror. “I’ve been back here way too long, Touka’s going to kill me!”

Hide let him go and laughed as he hastily collected the things he’d been sent to get in the first place.

“I’ll come over later tonight?” Kaneki asked.

“You’d better,” Hide smiled and Kaneki kissed him on the cheek before running off.

Hide smiled gently as he watched Kaneki run hurriedly back into the fray. Kaneki really was adorable.

It was maybe a bit odd that it had taken an argument to bring them closer. But Hide was somehow confident that they could work past this, now that Kaneki had revealed his biggest secret and discovered he was still loved. As for Hide, he was looking forward to getting to know him better.


End file.
